Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share my personal story about how I became a pianist. You might think that it would be obvious. Many of you know that my father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist. My sister is also a pianist. I’ve been surrounded with pianists and pianos my whole life! So you might think it’s the most natural thing in the world that I ended up being a pianist. Far from it!

I’ve always loved music.

I had the opportunity to start piano studying with my father when I was seven years old. Shortly thereafter, in fourth grade, I was given a French horn at school to play in the band. I was very taken with the instrument. I loved the tone! The French horn is everything the piano isn’t, and vice versa. On the piano, there’s only so much you can do with tone. Some pianists create a much more beautiful sound than other pianists. There’s something to that. But on the French horn, you can hear just one note and identify the player! What you can do with just one note is extraordinarily limited on the piano. But on the French horn, there is so much you can do with each note. It’s unbelievable! Plus I loved playing in the orchestra and the band. I was very serious about French horn. I divided my time between French horn and piano all through school.

In junior high I had a great French horn teacher, Hugh Cowden.

He was such an inspiration to me. I learned so much from that man that it was unbelievable! He used to come over to my house for lessons. We would go downstairs in the playroom and he would spend all afternoon there with me. We would play duets together, we would play recordings, he would have me do excerpts as well as etudes and concertos and sonatas. I learned all the Mozart Horn Concertos, the Strauss Concertos, the Glière Concerto, the Hindemith Sonata, and more. I really learned a tremendous amount. I loved the French horn. I played in several very good orchestras in high school. I even had the opportunity to play lead French horn with Chuck Mangione, and had a bunch of solos! I also played principal 1st horn on Mahler’s 1st Symphony under Seiji Ozawa on ABC Television at Tanglewood, as well as at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. I was extremely serious about the horn.

In middle school I remember saying to my parents, “How am I going to decide between French horn and piano when it’s time for college?”

My parents told me, “Oh, you’ll know.” And I said, “No, I won’t.” And sure enough, I didn’t! I couldn’t make up my mind between French horn and piano. To some extent, there were many mitigating factors to this. One was, my father had so many brilliant students, many of whom were far more accomplished technically than I was. I have small hands. Growing up, I struggled to develop enough strength to be able to play the literature I wanted to play on the piano. It was really hard for me. I overcame it, but it took much more work. I realized as a teacher, years later, how much easier piano was for so many of my students than it was for me! I’ve had students who could just leap from one level to another because their hands could handle it once they could intellectualize the music. I didn’t have that luxury. I had to work and work to develop the muscles, and to figure out how to break chords I couldn’t reach in order to be able to play advanced piano literature.

I loved playing in orchestra. And furthermore, I enjoyed practicing the French horn more than I enjoyed practicing the piano!

Playing the French horn is a visceral experience. It was just fun going through all the musical excerpts of the famous horn solos, whereas piano was almost drudgery. It takes so much work to memorize music on the piano! I loved refining the music once I had it memorized. That was the part I’ve always loved. But that initial memorization is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And if any of you memorize piano music, you understand. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Memorizing music is really hard! And it’s an essential part of piano practice (which I have come to enjoy!)

I decided that I would only audition at schools that offered double majors with horn and piano.

That’s why I didn’t apply to Juilliard, because they didn’t offer a double major. But the Manhattan School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music did. I applied at those schools and got into both schools on both instruments! I decided to go to the Manhattan School of Music to get to study with the principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The piano faculty was tremendous there as well.

When I went to my counselor to put my schedule together, it became obvious that doing a double major would never leave me enough time to practice.

It wasn’t just the private lessons. It was the entire course load that would be doubled up just about. Finding enough time to practice even with just a music performance degree on one instrument is a great challenge since you’re working towards a bachelor of music degree. It’s an academic degree. So you have a substantial course load. You have music theory, history, on and on as well. I decided to be a French horn major, because I could continue to study piano with my father. I wanted to be able to play in the ensembles. Playing with an orchestra is an integral part of playing the French horn. Piano, you can play all by yourself, or you can do collaborative work with four hand piano, accompanying, or chamber music. But you certainly have a lot to keep you busy just with solo repertoire. Whereas with the French horn, almost everything involves other instruments. Even solo music, you’re playing with a piano. But playing in an orchestra, that’s the end goal for a French hornist generally. There are very few people who only play solo French horn.

Well, I had an experience that I won’t go into and I won’t mention the name of the teacher. But it was a miserable experience that maybe I’ll write in a book someday. I’m not going to share it with you because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But a really horrific thing happened and I had to stop studying with the horn teacher who I had. At that point I figured I might as well study with a piano teacher. I was accepted by all the piano teachers at the Manhattan School of Music, which was very thrilling. I chose to study with Constance Keene. I decided to go back to my previous horn teacher, Hugh Cowden. He was such a great horn teacher, so it made sense. So I went and studied with Constance Keene on piano and continued doing horn outside of school.

When did I finally just go for piano?

I haven’t played the horn in quite a number of years. The last time I played the French horn, I played concerts in both New York and California with my father and my daughter! We did the Brahms Horn Trio, which is a magnificent work. You should listen to it if you’ve never heard it. I also performed the Benjamin Britten Serenade for Horn, Strings, and Tenor with an orchestra in Orange County. I was in top shape! This was in the early 2000s. But it was at the same time that I had just put together the concept of my Living Piano: Journey Through Time: Historic Concert Experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldMu-RHXfec&list=PLC9F55F8E11E5FBDE I was really gung-ho about this. This ended up being something I performed dozens of times in universities, art centers, and convention halls all over California. I performed this show for the annual conventions of the Music Teachers’ Association, as well as the Piano Technicians Guild. I even did a Living Piano cruise!

I divided my time between French horn and piano up until the early 2000s.

I was in the formative stages of the Living Piano show. My mind was completely wrapped up in it! Yet I had these important performances on the horn. I was practicing the horn incessantly! I had almost no time for the piano. So once those performances were over, I just completely left the horn in the case ever since, which is kind of a shame. I do have some recordings. One of these days maybe I’ll post the Brahms horn trio performance. Naturally, I played the horn part of that. My father, Morton Estrin, played the piano. My daughter, Jenny Estrin, played the violin part. She is an incredibly accomplished violinist!

That’s my personal piano story! I bet many of you are surprised to hear this. Have any of you had experiences with multiple instruments? Have any of you taken as long as me to make up your mind about what instrument would be your primary instrument? I’d love to hear from you! Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. A few weeks ago, I put out a video on the top 5 piano lesson fails. I thought it was only fair to do the other side of the equation. So today, I’m sharing the top 10 piano teacher fails! Incidentally, these aren’t just about piano teachers. Most of these apply to all teachers. So I think you’ll be very interested in this!

1. Your teacher doesn’t show you how to practice.

You go to your lesson. Your teacher makes corrections and they assign new material. When you get all done, they tell you to practice. You leave the lesson and go through those corrections. You have your new piece. But how do you practice? You realize you have no idea even how to approach the practicing! That’s because they didn’t show you how to practice. When you leave a lesson, you should know exactly what it is you have to do and how to do it. Just telling a student to practice isn’t enough.

2. Your teacher doesn’t show you how to memorize.

You learn a piece and you’ve played it for a long time. Finally, at the end of the lesson, your teacher says, “For next week, I want you to have this memorized.” You get home and you start from the beginning. You see if you know any of it. You remember just the first couple of bars. Your fingers kind of just go to the right keys because you’ve played it so many times. Then you wonder, “Well, now what do I do?” You can’t figure out how to memorize because your teacher didn’t show you how to memorize! They just expected you to know how to memorize.

This is really bad for a number of reasons. First of all, it makes you feel like something’s wrong with you! The teacher expects you to be able to memorize and you can’t do it. You feel like maybe you just aren’t smart enough to know how to memorize. Well, nobody can just instantly memorize! I guess there are some amazing geniuses out there who can just play music and it’s memorized immediately. Of course, if music is simple enough, maybe just sheer repetition will work. But if you have just one week to get something memorized, and you don’t have a method or a process, you’re in trouble. So, if your teacher tells you to memorize, ask them how to memorize. If you don’t get a clear, concise answer, then you might consider getting another teacher if memorization is important to you.

3. Your teacher gives you music that is too hard for you.

This is something that is so blatantly wrong and common! Teachers give music that’s too hard. Now, why would they do that? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, you might be begging your teacher to give you a certain Chopin etude. So part of it can be inspired by the student asking to play something that is really not appropriate for their level. Another thing is that teachers often like to brag to other teachers and pianists. “I have students playing Liszt etudes and late Beethoven sonatas.”, or whatever it may be, because it makes them feel like they’re really good teachers. Or maybe they’re tired of the easy pieces they teach all the time. If a student asks for something that’s too hard, they just say, “Go ahead and do it.” They figure, at least they’ll be listening to something that they like. Occasionally, studying a piece far more advanced than you have played before, can help you reach new levels in your playing if you are willing to put in the hours of practice necessary to master it. But all too often, you can end up wasting valuable practice time on something you can’t end up playing on a decent level.

4. Your teacher talks over your head.

This is something true of almost all subjects. Some teachers will talk over your head. They’re talking as if you understand them, and you sort of do, but not quite. You don’t even know what question to ask. You feel like it would make you seem stupid if you ask a question after your teacher talks to you like you understand. This is particularly true with music theory. Maybe they expect you to understand some complex harmonic progression and they think, “Well, this is the C diminished, which obviously is going to be in the key of D flat.” And you go, “Mm-hmm”. Before you can even formulate the question, they’re going on to the next thing. “So this is the diatonic chord in this key. And you can see, well of course the key signature…” You’re nodding along hoping you will eventually catch on, but you never really understand anything they’re talking about! You sort of get it. And once again, you think there’s something wrong with you because you think you should understand what they’re talking about! They seem so brilliant. And if they think you understand it, you should. Well, sometimes teachers don’t appreciate the foundation you need in order to follow the whole chain of a conversation. You could be lost at the beginning and kind of nodding along, thinking, “Oh, I’ll get this eventually by the end of this talk.” But then before you know it, you’re onto the next topic, and you never even get to it. So this is a really big problem.

5. Your teacher never reviews what you’ve learned previously.

Your teacher introduces something new. Great! “Today, we’re going to do harmonic analysis.” So you spend a little bit of time with it. But that’s the last time it ever comes up. Next time they bring up something else, like how to play scales in contrary motion. They do it once, then you never hear about that again. You never quite got it. Before you know it, you’re going on to two, three, or four other things. There’s no follow through. So you end up with all these little tidbits of knowledge that go by the wayside. You never really understand any of them because your teacher is not consistent in the instruction.

6. Your teacher’s instructions are too vague.

Have you ever gotten some abstract instructions? You’re playing a piece and your teacher says, “Over here, make it sound like butterflies flying through the wind in the flowers.” You’re thinking, “Wow, that sounds great.” You’re just so impressed with the imagery. But you think, “What do I do to make it sound like butterflies?” You love the whole concept of it so much that you don’t want to ask about it. Abstract comments can sometimes give you some vague idea of what you’re after. But if it’s not followed through with specific instructions about how to achieve that sound, it can be meaningless. It might sound good, but you need more than that.

7. Your teacher makes you feel bad about yourself.

Now we’re getting to some of the heavy things. There are some really destructive things that teachers can do. A teacher might say something passive aggressive like, “That’s good if you think you like it that way.” They make you feel small. They’re saying things to you and making you feel terrible. Why is this so destructive? Well, first of all, it’s hurtful! Also, it might make you just give up on the whole idea of piano. If you’re constantly demeaned at lessons, then you lose the joy. What’s the point of studying piano if you can’t enjoy it, right?

8. Your teacher yells.

Teachers who yell, there’s really no excuse for this. It really is verbal abuse. “Why don’t you know your scales? You should know this by now!” Or, “You didn’t memorize this piece? I told you to memorize it!” Any kind of yelling, there’s no place for that in a piano lesson. There is one tiny exception. I notice that with online lessons, occasionally the technology doesn’t cooperate. A student is playing a sonata and I need to stop them. I’m going, “Hey! Hey!” Trying to get somebody’s attention online. But that’s a different story. I’m talking about yelling at a student because they’re doing something wrong. The teacher thinks they need to yell to make their point. No. That’s not an appropriate way to make a point. End of story.

9. Your teacher physically harms you.

I’ve heard so many stories about teachers who hit their students. Hitting is absolutely wrong in any circumstance during a lesson! There’s an old story, you’ve probably heard of teachers who used rulers to make students’ corrections. Every time there was a wrong finger, whack! The teacher thought, “If they know they’re going to get hit, they’re going to play with the right fingers.” Well, aside from the potential for damage, pain is not a good way of getting people to be open to concepts of instruction. Hitting is just absolutely wrong.

Early on in my teaching career, I had a student who hit me! It was a child, but a child who was old enough to know better. And Janine, if you’re listening now, I forgive you. She was actually joyful to work with and it really didn’t hurt. But it was kind of weird to be hit by a student! But hitting from a teacher, or a student for that matter, is absolutely inappropriate, obviously.

10. Your teacher doesn’t allow you to play through anything.

This can be so frustrating! You start your piano lesson and begin playing. You make a mistake early on and your teacher stops you. “That was wrong.” So then you try to continue, but you’re kind of put off by this. So you go on and make a mistake again, just because you’re not in your groove anymore. Before you know it, you’re so afraid of being stopped, that you’re not even concentrating on the music anymore! This is so counterproductive. A teacher has to let you play through your music so they know how to guide the lesson. That’s how they can see the points that need to be covered during the course of the lesson. They must listen through. Even if there are several things they think they absolutely must discuss with you, if they don’t hear everything, how do they know the priorities of the lesson? They don’t. Worse yet, it doesn’t give you an opportunity to show them the hard work you did during the course of the week. You want to show them your achievements and feel good about them before getting to work. So, if you have a teacher who doesn’t let you play through things during the course of a lesson, that’s not going to work. It’s not going to be a very useful or valuable lesson for you.

Those are the top 10 teacher fails!

I wonder if any of you have other teacher fails to share. Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com or YouTube! Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for subscribing, and telling people about Living Pianos. There are more piano videos coming your way on LivingPianos.com – Your Online Piano Resource!

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Supplemental Content:
Top 5 Piano Lesson Fails

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you should practice the piano every day. Why is it so important? There are a number of reasons. Now, other instruments have their reasons. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also a French hornist. With the French horn, like many wind instruments, there’s a physiology to the lips which produce the tone. It’s so hard to get back into shape if you miss too many days, because the lips are such tender muscles. The piano doesn’t really have that issue so much. If you miss a day, you’re not going to feel drastically different in your hands. Why is it so important to practice every day, then? Well, there are two reasons, fundamentally.

First, certain aspects of piano practice are extraordinarily difficult and taxing.

Things like memorization can’t easily be crammed into less days. When you’re memorizing music, there’s a certain amount that you can absorb fairly easily. Then it’s an uphill struggle to keep putting more music into your head. You have to really be committed and work extra hard to memorize the third and fourth phrase if you’ve already learned a couple of phrases. It can be done, but it’s harder. So why not take advantage of your fresh mind? Each day, learn something! Even if it’s just a short practice session, it can really help you in the long run if you at least take on some of your score each day.

Second, a lot of times you’ll feel like you’ve made two steps forward and four steps backwards.

When you practice something, then leave it for a day or two, when you come back to it, you might feel like you didn’t even learn anything. It’s so demoralizing! You can’t get that continuity, so you’re just learning the same thing again. Not only is it not as productive, but it kind of drains your soul. You don’t feel excited about practicing when you come back to the same problems over and over again. But if you come back to it the next day, you’ll forget some from the previous day, but it’ll come back pretty quickly. Then you can get right to work learning more music. It’s encouraging. You can keep the momentum going.

Use your mind when it’s fresh, even if it’s for a short practice session.

Keep the continuity of your learning day by day. This is not only a good technique for memorization, but also refinement. You might have an epiphany into your technique with arpeggios, but then you’ll skip a day or two and you come back to it and the same issues persist. So practice every day, even if it’s only a little bit. You might not have much time, but by using any little time you do have each day, you can maintain productive practice. Dinner’s in the oven, you’ve got 10 minutes. Practice! Even those short amounts of time make a big difference if you do it on a regular basis. I do the same thing with exercise, by the way. When I’m waiting for something I’ll do some simple exercises and stretching. Take advantage of every moment with the things that are important in your life. Over time it makes a dramatic difference! That’s the message for today. I hope it works for you! Let me know in the comments on LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about easing performance anxiety by avoiding negative self-talk. You believe what you say! I’ve seen this happen so many times with performers. It’s not just in music, it’s in everything in life. Whether it’s sports, interviews, public speaking, and more. You believe what you say in your head to yourself. So if you tell yourself you’re going to bomb a performance, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you believe what you’ve told yourself. You really have to be careful what you say in your head before and during a performance.

You have to envision a positive outcome.

Imagine yourself at a performance. Imagine the successful outcome in great detail. Live in that moment in your head. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and meditate on that moment. Then when you are at your performance, it feels familiar. You’ve already set yourself up for success. It’s so vitally important! This can work for anything from your piano lessons to job interviews. Imagine yourself having a positive experience. Keep that projection in your head. Once you start telling yourself, “I can do this. I feel good about this.” Then you’re going to bring about a better performance.

Once you start with negative self-talk it’s a spiral that’s really hard to get out of.

Be careful what you say to yourself! It will manifest itself either positively or negatively. It’s really important in musical performances and in life itself to have a positive outlook. I Hope this is helpful for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is about what makes a pianist’s sound unique. This is a really tough question to answer, but I’m going to do my best!
My wife is a flutist. When she was very young, she studied with some great concert flutists. At one point she heard her teacher play her cheap student level flute. Sure enough, it no longer sounded like a cheap flute. It sounded like this great flutist! With wind instruments, it’s obvious. And it’s most obvious with singers. As soon as you hear a voice, you know who it is.

If you hear Frank Sinatra, there’s no doubt about who you’re listening to.

With piano, it’s much further removed from singing, certainly. It isn’t even like the distinctive sounds of wind and string players. But indeed, there are unique sounds different pianists produce. I grew up idolizing Horowitz and Rubinstein. The whole methodology of their pianistic approach was so drastically different from one another. So, this enters into it. Certainly, physiology has something to do with the sound of the piano as well. A massive man might have a bigger sound compared to a very slight man or woman. But not always. It goes much deeper. How you hear things will affect the way you approach the keyboard, and results in very different sound production.

What are some of those differences? Well, I was trained from a very young age by my father, Morton Estrin, to have the weight of the arms supported by the fingers instead of having limp fingers floating in midair and letting the fingers push down. Now, in very fast passages that’s exactly what you want to do, because you can’t support much weight when you’re going very quickly. But in a slow melody, you certainly want to have a sense of line. And the best way to get that is to use the weight of the arm. Using this method you can produce a fluid line on the piano like a singer. Playing just with the fingers, without supporting with the weight of the arm, results in a less fluid performance. Naturally, how the pedal comes into play also affects the tone tremendously.

There are some pianists who produce such unique sounds that you know who they are instantly!

I find this amazing. With the human voice, you’ve got the whole inside of the body and the vocal cords and the intonation of speech. On a wind instrument, you have the lips and you also have the throat and the vibrations within the chest cavity. There is so much more to identify sound. What do you have with the piano? The tone is produced by hammers hitting strings. How the heck do you achieve a distinct sound? Well, just like I have revealed previously, growing up I had very small, weak fingers, and yet I grew up hearing my father and some of his spectacular students. I always would strive to get that big beautiful sound. In fact, I contorted my body trying to make my spaghetti fingers produce anything close to the sound I heard from my father. But I made it happen in slow music particularly. Fast pieces were a little bit tougher for me having weak fingers, and I didn’t practice a great deal as a young child. But on slow music though, even from the youngest age, I was able to produce the sounds that I heard just from making it happen.

The sound of a pianist comes down to what they hear in their head and achieving that sound.

So that’s the lesson for today. It’s all about the connection of the hands to the ears. And that’s what you want to strive for in your playing so you can express your voice on the piano. I’d love to hear from any of you who have ideas about how to produce a beautiful sound on the piano! There’s a lot more to this subject, and I may produce a whole series about this on my Patreon channel. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed! I’ll see you next time. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Thanks again for joining me.

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Thanks for joining us here at LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is, “Is Juilliard the Best Music School in the World?” Almost everybody has heard of Juilliard and indeed, there are some sensational musicians who have come out of the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. But is Juilliard the best music school in the world? I can tell you that the Juilliard Orchestra is made up of absolutely top-notch musicians. There are so many violin and cello soloists who go to the Juilliard School that you’ve got a whole string section of soloists! Across the board it’s a great school. Located right in Lincoln Center. What could be better?

As great as Juilliard is, there are two music schools even more elite: The Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia and the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

Curtis and Colburn are magnificent institutions with illustrious faculties. They are both total scholarship schools, so it’s a complete free ride for everyone who goes there. It’s extraordinarily difficult to get in, but a top-notch experience. At Curtis, pianists even get a piano in their apartment to practice on! Also, Curtis has the Philadelphia Orchestra right there. Many of the members of the orchestra are on faculty! And of course Colburn has the benefit of the LA Philharmonic being right there too. The endowments are incredible! So while Juilliard isn’t quite that elite, it’s certainly a great school.

There is a new Juilliard School now in Shanghai!

Shanghai is the epicenter of the piano world. To put it into perspective, there are around 6 million piano students here in the United States, but China has well over 50 million piano students! It’s pretty remarkable. It’s a magnificent idea to open a Juilliard school in China where it’s really needed. It will be interesting to see the next generation of musicians coming out of China, particularly on piano, which is so popular there.

I would love to hear from all of you!

Are there any other schools you consider to be the best? I’m sure there are many schools in Europe that are very selective and have illustrious faculties as well. I just mentioned two schools here in the United States that are incredibly well endowed. Let me know your thoughts on this subject!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos.

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